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February 14, 2021

Bonnet Supports and Hinges

One sort of unique thing about the GT6 and related cars is the way the entire front clip tilts forward to expose the engine and front suspension.  This is possible because the bonnet, front wings, wheel wells, and grille area are essentially one welded up assembly.  A pair of curly support tubes hug and are bolted to the wheel wells, and continue through the front grille to form part of a pair of hinge contraptions behind the front bumper.  The other halves of the hinges bolt to short extensions on the front frame cross member.  There is also a smaller tube that spans from port to starboard under the bonnet to give some support at the center.

My support tubes were all present and in rusty, but otherwise decent shape. 




The frame-side brackets were also in OK shape, except for the actual pivot point.  The forward end of each bracket has a welded-in sleeve.  A tubular distance piece, slightly longer than the sleeve, slides into the sleeve, and is clamped firmly between the cheeks of the hinge end of the support tube.  This allows the support tubes to rotate smoothly around the axis of  the sleeves.  At least that was the idea.  Both of my brackets had the distance pieces firmly seized in their sleeves.  The only reason the bonnet could still be raised was that the fasteners were loose.




After a bit of a wrestling match, I did manage to liberate the distance pieces, but in the process, the ends got pretty chowdered up.  The damage was to the point that they were just about the same length as the sleeves they had to fit into, so the necessary clearance was pretty much gone.  They are the pair of smaller tubes in this picture.




I decided to just make a pair of replacement distance pieces to give a positive clearance.




Since the support tubes themselves didn't need any attention other than cleaning and priming, the only detail left was the clamp brackets that held the tubes in place.  They were rusty, but looked OK until I blasted them.  A couple of the backing plates had rust-through holes in the middle.




I'm not sure if these are available for sale anywhere, but they were easy to make.




Priming and test fitting of everything went fine.  The spacers and hardware were plated.  These will go on the shelf until the day they will be reunited with the bonnet.




This was basically an in-fill task, ramping up to the day I can finally get back out to the garage.  It was good for a day or so's worth of time, and the cost was near zero.

Comments to Ed at elhollin1@yahoo.com

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